INTRODUCTION TO SENSOR NETWORKS:

Wireless Sensor Networks have recently emerged as a premier research topic. They
have great long term economic potential, ability to transform lives, and pose many system-
building challenges. Wireless sensor networks also pose a number of new conceptual and
optimization problems, such as deployment, location and tracking, are fundamental issues, in
that many applications rely on them for needed information. Coverage basically, answers the
questions about quality of service (surveillance) that can be provided by a particular sensor
network. The integration of several types of sensors such as seismic, optical, acoustic etc. in
one network platform and the study of the overall coverage of the system also presents many
interesting challenges .With the refinement of energy harvesting techniques that can gather
useful energy from blasts of radio energy, vibrations and the like, self-powered circuitry is a
real possibility, with networks of millions of nodes, deployed through injections, paintbrushes
and aircraft. Also, the introduction of an additional type of sensor node allowing the network
to self-organize by embedding adaptive and smart algorithms. While on the other hand, the
use of adaptive power control in IP networks that utilizes reactive routing protocols and
sleep-mode operation, more powerful mobile agents, QoS (Quality of Service) to guarantee
delivery, robustness, security mechanisms, and fault-tolerance.
Wireless sensors have become an excellent tool for military applications involving
intrusion detection, perimeter monitoring, and information gathering and smart logistics
support in an unknown deployed area. Other applications include sensor-based personal
health monitor, location detection with sensor networks and movement detection.
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) enjoy great benefits due to their low-cost, small-
scale factor, smart sensor nodes. Not only can they be employed in cumbersome and
dangerous areas of interest, for monitoring or controlling the region, but they can also be
deployed to automate mundane tasks. Early sensory units were expensive and lacked the
computational and communicational capabilities of current smart sensor nodes, which can
now sense, process, store, and forward data, all being powered by a battery.
CONSTRAINTS AND CHALLENGES:
CONSTRAINTS
1. DESIGN ISSUES
–tolerant Communication: Due to the deployment of sensor nodes in an uncontrolled
or harsh environment, it is not uncommon for the sensor nodes to become faulty and
unreliable.

recognized immediately by the operator. Therefore, the framework has to detect and notify
the events quickly as soon as possible.
stem, whose performance improves after adding hardware, proportionally
to the capacity added, is said to be a scalable system. The number of sensor nodes deployed
in the sensing area may be in the order of hundreds or thousands, or more.
 Transmission Media: In a multi-hop sensor network, communicating nodes are linked by a
wireless medium. The traditional problems associated with a wireless channel (e.g., fading,
high error rate) may also affect the operation of the sensor network.
erage Problems: One fundamental problem in wireless sensor networks is the coverage
problem, which reflects the quality of service that can be provided by a particular sensor
network. The coverage problem is defined from several points of view due to a variety of
sensor networks and a wide-range of their applications.
2. TOPOLOGY ISSUES

position information. It is mainly proposed for wireless networks and based on the idea that
the source sends a message to the geographic location of the destination instead of using the
network address.

are not available or the available nodes cannot participate in the actual routing of the data due
to various possible reasons. The task of identifying holes is especially challenging since
typical wireless sensor networks consist of lightweight, low-capability nodes that are unaware
of their geographic location.

by sensors. The coverage and connectivity problems in sensor networks have received
considerable attention in the research community in recent years. This problem can be
formulated as a decision problem, whose goal is to determine whether every point in the
service area of the sensor network is covered by at least k sensors, where k is a given
parameter.
3. OTHER ISSUES
The major issues that affect the design and performance of a wireless sensor network are as
follows:

Layer
CHALLENGES
1. Challenges in real time-
WSN deal with real world environments. In many cases, sensor data must be delivered within
time constraints so that appropriate observations can be made or actions taken. Very few
results exist to date regarding meeting realtime requirements in WSN. Most protocols either
ignore real-time or simply attempt to process as fast as possible and hope that this speed is
sufficient to meet deadlines. Some initial results exist for real-time routing. To date, the
limited results that have appeared for WSN regarding real-time issues has been in routing.
Many other functions must also meet real-time constraints including: data fusion, data
transmission, target and event detection and classification, query processing, and security.
New results are needed to guarantee soft real-time requirements and that deal with the
realities of WSN such as lost messages, noise and congestion. Using feedback control to
address both steady state and transient behaviour seems to hold promise. Dealing with real-
time usually identifies the need for differentiated services, e.g., routing solutions need to
support different classes of traffic; guarantees for the important traffic and less support for
unimportant traffic. It is important not only to develop real-time protocols for WSN, but
associated analysis techniques must also be developed.
2. Challenges in power managements-
Low-cost deployment is one acclaimed advantage of sensor networks. Limited processor
bandwidth and small memory are two arguable constraints in sensor networks, which will
disappear with the development of fabrication techniques. However, the energy constraint is
unlikely to be solved soon due to slow progress in developing battery capacity. Moreover, the
untended nature of sensor nodes and hazardous sensing environments preclude battery
replacement as a feasible solution. On the other hand, the surveillance nature of many sensor
network applications requires a long lifetime; therefore, it is a very important research issue
to provide a form of energy-efficient surveillance service for a geographic area. Much of the
current research focuses on how to provide full or partial sensing coverage in the context of
energy conservation.
3. Network Scale and Time-Varying Characteristics of WSN-
Under severe energy constraints, Sensor nodes operate with limited computing, storage and
communication capabilities. Depending upon the application, the densities of the WSNs may
vary widely, ranging from very sparse to very dense. In these sensor nodes the behaviour of
sensor nodes is dynamic and highly adaptive, as the need to self-organize and conserve
energy forces sensor nodes to adjust the behaviour constantly in response to their current
level of activity. Furthermore, the sensor nodes may be requires adjusting the behaviour in
response to the erratic and unpredictable behaviour of wireless connections caused by high
noise levels and radio-frequency interference, to prevent severe performance degradation of
the application supported.
4. Management at a Distance-
Sensor nodes will be deployed at our door field such as a subway station. It is difficult for
managers or operators to manage the network directly. Thus the framework should provide an
indirect remote control/ management system.
ADVANTAGES OF SENSOR NETWORKS:
1. Network setups can be carried out without fixed infrastructure.
2. Suitable for the non-reachable places such as over the sea, mountains, rural areas or deep
forests.
3. Flexible if there is random situation when additional workstation is needed.
4. Implementation pricing is cheap.
5. It avoids plenty of wiring.
6. It might accommodate new devices at any time.
7. It's flexible to undergo physical partitions.
8. It can be accessed by using a centralized monitor.
APPLICATIONS OF SENSOR NETWORKS:
The applications for WSNs involve tracking, monitoring and controlling. WSNs are
mainly utilized for habitat monitoring, object tracking, nuclear reactor control, fire detection,
and traffic monitoring. Area monitoring is a very common application of WSNs, in which
the WSN is deployed over a region where some incident might be monitored. E.g., a
substantial variety of sensor nodes may very well be deployed over the battlefield to detect
enemy intrusions rather than using landmines. When the sensors detect case being monitored
(heat, pressure, sound, light, electro-magnetic flux, vibration, etc.), the big event needs to be
reported to at least one in the base stations, which often can than take some appropriate action
(e.g., send some text online or even a satellite).
Wireless sensor networks are utilized extensively within the water/wastewater
industries. Facilities not wired for power or data transmission can be monitored using
industrial wireless I/O devices and sensor nodes powered by solar panels or battery packs.
Wireless sensor networks are able to use numerous sensors to detect the existence of vehicles
for vehicle detection. Wireless sensor networks may also be employed to control the
temperature and humidity levels inside commercial greenhouses. If the temperature and
humidity drops below specific levels, the greenhouse manager might be notified via e-mail or
a cellular telephone text, or host systems can trigger misting systems, open vents, first turn on
fans, or a multitude of system responses. Because some wireless sensor networks are super
easy to install, they've also been simple move if the needs with the application change.
There are lots of applications of WSN:
1.Process Management: Area monitoring is a very common using WSNs. In area monitoring,
the W SN is deployed spanning a region where some phenomenon is usually to be monitored.
A military example may be the use of sensors detect enemy intrusion; a civilian example
would be the geo-fencing of gas or oil pipelines. Area monitoring is most important part.
2.Healthcare monitoring: The medical applications might be of two sorts: wearable and
implanted. Wearable devices are applied to the body surface of the human or maybe at close
proximity from the user. The implantable medical devices are the ones that are inserted inside
your body. There are numerous other applications too e.g. body position measurement and of
the person, overall monitoring of ill patients in hospitals and also at homes.
3.Environmental/Earth sensing: There are numerous applications in monitoring
environmental parameter samples of which are given below. They share any additional
challenges of harsh environments and reduced power supply.
4.Polluting of the environment monitoring: Wireless sensor networks have been deployed in
lots of cities (Stockholm, London and Brisbane) to monitor the power of dangerous gases for
citizens. These can leverage the random wireless links instead of wired installations that also
make them more mobile for testing readings in several areas.
5.Forest fire detection: A network of Sensor Nodes is usually positioned in a forest to detect
every time a fire has begun. The node is usually with sensors to measure temperature,
humidity and gases which are produced by fire within the trees or vegetation. The first
detection is necessary to get a successful action of the fire fighters; As a result of Wireless as
Sensor Networks, the fire brigade are able to know when a fire begins you bet it can be
spreading.
6.Landslide detection: A landslide detection system uses a wireless sensor network to detect
the slight movements of soil and modifications to various parameters that will occur before or
throughout a landslide. With the data gathered it may be possible to know the appearance of
landslides before it genuinely happens.
7.Water quality monitoring: Water quality monitoring involves analysing water properties in
dams, rivers, lakes & oceans, and also underground water reserves. The application of many
wireless distributed sensors enables the creation of a accurate map on the water status, and
allows the permanent deployment of monitoring stations in locations of difficult access, while
not manual data retrieval.
8.Natural disaster prevention: Wireless sensor networks can effectively act to avoid the
results of disasters, like floods. Wireless nodes have successfully been deployed in rivers
where changes in the water levels have to be monitored in real time.
9.Industrial monitoring:
a. Machine health monitoring: Wireless sensor networks happen to be developed for
machinery condition based maintenance (CBM) as they offer significant personal savings and
enable new functionality. In wired systems, installing enough sensors can often be tied to the
price of wiring. Previously inaccessible locations, rotating machinery, hazardous or restricted
areas, and mobile assets can now be reached with wireless sensors.
b. Data logging: Wireless sensor networks are also employed for the gathering of
web data for monitoring of environmental information; this is often as easy as the monitoring
from the temperature in a very fridge to the level of water in overflow tanks in nuclear power
plants. The statistical information will then be employed to show how systems have been
working. The main benefit of WSNs over conventional loggers is the "live" data feed which
is possible.
c. Water/Waste water monitoring: Monitoring the high quality and level of water
includes many activities including checking the quality of underground or surface water and
ensuring a country’s water infrastructure for your benefit of both human and animal. It may
be helpful to protect the wastage of water.
d. Structural Health Monitoring: Wireless sensor networks enables you to monitor
the fitness of civil infrastructure and related geophysical processes all around real time, and
more than very long stretches through data logging, using appropriately interfaced sensors.
TYPES OF WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS:
Depending on the environment, the types of networks are decided so that those can be
deployed underwater, underground, on land, and so on. Different types of WSNs include:
1.Terrestrial WSNs
2.Underground WSNs
3.Underwater WSNs
4.Multimedia WSNs
5.Mobile WSNs
1.Terrestrial WSNs
Terrestrial WSNs are capable of communicating base stations efficiently, and consist of
hundreds to thousands of wireless sensor nodes deployed either in an unstructured (ad hoc) or
structured (Pre-planned) manner. In an unstructured mode, the sensor nodes are randomly
distributed within the target area that is dropped from a fixed plane. The pre-planned or
structured mode considers optimal placement, grid placement, and 2D, 3D placement models.
In this WSN, the battery power is limited; however, the battery is equipped with solar
cells as a secondary power source. The Energy conservation of these WSNs is achieved by
using low duty cycle operations, minimizing delays, and optimal routing, and so on.
2.Underground WSNs
The underground wireless sensor networks are more expensive than the terrestrial
WSNs in terms of deployment, maintenance, and equipment cost considerations and careful
planning. The WSNs networks consist of several sensor nodes that are hidden in the ground
to monitor underground conditions. To relay information from the sensor nodes to the base
station, additional sink nodes are located above the ground.
The underground wireless sensor networks deployed into the ground are difficult to
recharge. The sensor battery nodes equipped with limited battery power are difficult to
recharge. In addition to this, the underground environment makes wireless communication a
challenge due to the high level of attenuation and signal loss.
 (Fig.) Underground WSNs

3.Underwater WSNs
More than 70% of the earth is occupied with water. These networks consist of several
sensor nodes and vehicles deployed underwater. Autonomous underwater vehicles are used
for gathering data from these sensor nodes. A challenge of underwater communication is a
long propagation delay, and bandwidth and sensor failures.

(Fig.) Underwater WSNs

 Underwater WSNs are equipped with a limited battery that cannot be recharged or
replaced. The issue of energy conservation for underwater WSNs involves the development
of underwater communication and networking techniques.
4.Multimedia WSNs
Multimedia wireless sensor networks have been proposed to enable tracking and
monitoring of events in the form of multimedia, such as imaging, video, and audio. These
networks consist of low-cost sensor nodes equipped with microphones and cameras. These
nodes are interconnected with each other over a wireless connection for data compression,
data retrieval, and correlation.

(Fig.) Multimedia WSns

The challenges with the multimedia WSN include high energy consumption, high
bandwidth requirements, data processing, and compressing techniques. In addition to this,
multimedia contents require high bandwidth for the content to be delivered properly and
easily.
5.Mobile WSNs
These networks consist of a collection of sensor nodes that can be moved on their own
and can be interacted with the physical environment. The mobile nodes can compute sense
and communicate.
Mobile wireless sensor networks are much more versatile than static sensor networks.
The advantages of MWSN over static wireless sensor networks include better and improved
coverage, better energy efficiency, superior channel capacity, and so on.
MANET(Mobile Ad hoc Network):
Consists of a set of mobile nodes connected wirelessly in a self-configured, self-healing
network without having a fixed infrastructure. MANET nodes are free to move randomly as
the network topology changes frequently. Each node behaves as a router as they forward
traffic to other specified nodes in the network.

 It is purely wireless network.

 There is no fixed infrastructure.
 Dynamic topologies.
 Node in MANET can act as Host or Router.
 MANET is a autonomous collection of mobile users that communicate over wireless
link.

Characteristics:
Dynamic topologies: nodes are free to move arbitrarily; thus the network topology may be
changed randomly and unpredictably and primarily consists of bidirectional links. In some
cases where the transmission power of two nodes is different, a unidirectional link may exist.

Bandwidth-constrained and variable capacity links: wireless links continue to have

significantly lower capacity than infrastructure networks.

Energy Constrained Operation:

As some or all the nodes rely on batteries or other exhaustible means for their energy.so
energy drop will occur.Mobile nodes are characterized by less memory, power, and
lightweight features.

Limited Security:
Wireless networks are more prone to security threats. A centralized firewall is absent due to
the distributed nature of the operation for security, routing, and host configuration.

Less Human Intervention:

They require minimum human intervention to configure the network, therefore they are
dynamically autonomous in nature.

Pros and Cons of MANET –

Pros:
1. Separation from central network administration.
2. Each node can play both the roles ie. of router and host showing autonomous
nature
3. Self-configuring and self-healing nodes do not require human intervention.

Cons:
1. Resources are limited due to various constraints like noise, interference
conditions, etc.
2. Lack of authorization facilities.
3. More prone to attacks due to limited physical security.

Applications of MANET:

 Crisis management applications

 Defense applications
 Telemedicine
 Tele-geoprocessing application
 Education via the internet
 Virtual Navigation
 Vehicular area network
Properties:
 Fast Network establishment
 Peer to peer connectivity
 Independent communication
 No requirement of access point
 Less Wireless connectivity Range
Challenges:
 Dynamic topology (nodes keep on moving)
 Limited Bandwidth
 Energy constrained(there is no backup space)
 Difficulty in Routing
1. Nodes are mobile in nature
2. Change the links frequently
Routing
Routing is the process of finding the best path for traffic in a network, or across multiple
networks.
Routing protocol should follow:
1. Reliabillity
2. Least cost in routing traffic in network
3. Maximum throughput means minimum idle time for nodes.
Types of Routing:
 Proactive
 Reactive
 Hybrid

Proactive Routing:
 Route is determained in advance
 It is also called as Table Driven Routing
Advantages:
a) Low route latency(delay)
b) State information
c) Quality of service guarantee
Disadvantage:
a) Unfortunately, it is a big overhead to maintain routing tables in the MANET
environment.
b) Periodic update is needed.
Reactive routing:
1. reactive protocols build the routes only on demand so called as on demand routing.
2. Route is determined only when needed
Advantages:
 a) Less overhead
b) Scalability is good
Disadvantage:
a) Latency time is high in route finding
b) Route caching can be reduced
Hybrid Routing:
Proactive +reactive
For nearby nodes we use proactive protocol where information is stored.
For far away nodes Reactive protocol is used only on the need basis
Hybrid protocols attempt to take advantage of best of reactive and proactive schemes. The
basic idea behind such protocols is to initiate route discovery on demand but at a limited
search cost. One of the popular hybrid protocols is zone routing protocol (ZRP).

Wireless Ad hoc Network vs Wireless Sensor network

Wireless Ad hoc Network :

A wireless ad-hoc network is a wireless network deployed without any framework
or infrastructure. This incorporates wireless mesh networks, mobile ad-hoc networks, and
vehicular ad-hoc networks.
Wireless ad-hoc networks, in particular mobile adhoc network are growing very fast
as they make communication simpler and progressively accessible. In any case, their
conventions or protocols will in general be hard to structure due to topology dependent
behavior of wireless communication, and their distributed and adaptive operations to
topology dynamism. They are allowed to move self-assertively at any time. So, the network
topology of MANET may change randomly and rapidly at unpredictable times. This makes
routing difficult because the topology is continually changing and nodes cannot be expected
to have steady data storage.

Applications:
1. Data Mining
2. Military battlefield
3. Commercial Sector
4. Personal area network or Bluetooth.

Wireless Sensor Network:

A wireless sensor network can be characterized as a system of devices, indicated as
nodes which can detect the environment and impart the data accumulated from the
monitored field (e.g., a zone or volume) through remote or wireless connections. It can be
depicted as a system of nodes that agreeably sense and may control the environment
enabling association between people or computers and the surrounding environment. The
information is sent, possibly through different jumps, to a sink (indicated as a controller or
 monitor) that can utilize it locally or is associated with different systems (e.g., The Internet)
through a portal. The nodes can be fixed or moving.
Applications:
1. Environmental Monitoring
2. Health Care
3. Positioning and Monitoring

Differences between Wireless Ad hoc Network and Wireless Sensor Network :

Wireless Ad hoc Network Wireless Sensor Network

The medium used in wireless adhoc The medium used in wireless sensor networks are
networks is radio waves. radio waves, infrared, optical media.

Application independent network is

used. Application dependent network is used.

Query based (data centric routing) or location based

Hop-to-Hop routing takes place. routing takes place.

It is heterogeneous in type. It is homogeneous in type.

The traffic pattern is any-to-any, many-to-one,

The traffic pattern is point-to-point. many-to-few, one-to-many.

Wireless router is used as an inter- Application level gateway is used as an inter-

connecting device. connecting device.

The data rate is high. The data rate is low.

Supports common services. Supports specific applications.

Traffic triggering depends on

application needs. Triggered by sensing events.

Local unique MAC address or spatial IP is used for

IP address is used for addressing. addressing.
ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS
Building such wireless sensor networks has only become possible with some
fundamental advances in enabling technologies.
First and foremost among these technologies is the miniaturization of hardware.
Smaller feature sizes in chips have driven down the power consumption of the basic
components of a sensor node to a level that the constructions of WSNs can be contemplated.
This is particularly relevant to microcontrollers and memory chips as such, but also,
the radio modems, responsible for wireless communication, have become much more energy
efficient.
Reduced chip size and improved energy efficiency is accompanied by reduced cost,
which is necessary to make redundant deployment of nodes affordable.
Next to processing and communication, the actual sensing equipment is the third
relevant technology.
These three basic parts of a sensor node have to accompanied by power supply. This
requires, depending on application, high capacity batteries that last for long times, that is,
have only a negligible self-discharge rate, and that can efficiently provide small amounts of
current.
Ideally, a sensor node also has a device for energy scavenging, recharging the battery
with energy gathered from the environment – solar cells or vibration-based power generation
are conceivable options.
Such a concept requires the battery to be efficiently chargeable with small amounts of
current, which is not a standard ability. Both batteries and energy scavenging are still objects
of ongoing research.
The counterpart to the basic hardware technologies is software. The first question to
answer here is the principal division of tasks and functionalities in a single node – the
architecture of the operating system or runtime environment.
This environment has to support simple retasking, cross-layer information exchange,
and modularity to allow for simple maintenance.
This software architecture on a single node has to be extended to a network
architecture, where the division of tasks between nodes, not only on a single node, becomes
the relevant question – for example, how to structure interfaces for application programmers.
The third part to solve then is the question of how to design appropriate
communication protocols.
ISSUES AND CHALLENGES
A.Design Issues:
–tolerant Communication: Due to the deployment of sensor nodes in an uncontrolled
or harsh environment, it is not uncommon for the sensor nodes to become faulty and
unreliable.
framework deals with are urgent which should be
recognized immediately by the operator. Therefore, the framework has to detect and notify
the events quickly as soon as possible.
 portionally
to the capacity added, is said to be a scalable system. The number of sensor nodes deployed
in the sensing area may be in the order of hundreds or thousands, or more.
-hop sensor network, communicating nodes are linked by a
wireless medium. The traditional problems associated with a wireless channel (e.g., fading,
high error rate) may also affect the operation of the sensor network.
Coverage Problems: One fundamental problem in wireless sensor networks is the coverage
problem, which reflects the quality of service that can be provided by a particular sensor
network. The coverage problem is defined from several points of view due to a variety of
sensor networks and a wide-range of their applications.
B. Topology Issues

position information. It is mainly proposed for wireless networks and based on the idea that
the source sends a message to the geographic location of the destination instead of using the
network address.

are not available or the available nodes cannot participate in the actual routing of the data due
to various possible reasons.
The task of identifying holes is especially challenging since typical wireless sensor networks
consist of lightweight, low-capability nodes that are unaware of their geographic location.
well an area is monitored or tracked
by sensors. The coverage and connectivity problems in sensor networks have received
considerable attention in the research community in recent years. This problem can be
formulated as a decision problem, whose goal is to determine whether every point in the
service area of the sensor network is covered by at least k sensors, where k is a given
parameter.
C. Other issues
The major issues that affect the design and performance of a wireless sensor network
are as follows:
A. Challenges in real time:
WSN deal with real world environments. In many cases, sensor data must be
delivered within time constraints so that appropriate observations can be made or actions
taken. Very few results exist to date regarding meeting real-time requirements in WSN. Most
protocols either ignore real-time or simply attempt to process as fast as possible and hope that
this speed is sufficient to meet deadlines. Some initial results exist for real-time routing. To
date, the limited results that have appeared for WSN regarding real-time issues has been in
routing. Many other functions must also meet real-time constraints including: data fusion,
data transmission, target and event detection and classification, query processing, and
security. New results are needed to guarantee soft real-time requirements and that deal with
the realities of WSN such as lost messages, noise and congestion. Using feedback control to
address both steady state and transient behaviour seems to hold promise. Dealing with real-
time usually identifies the need for differentiated services, e.g., routing solutions need to
support different classes of traffic; guarantees for the important traffic and less support for
unimportant traffic. It is important not only to develop real-time protocols for WSN, but
associated analysis techniques must also be developed
B. Challenges in power managements:
Low-cost deployment is one acclaimed advantage of sensor networks. Limited
processor bandwidth and small memory are two arguable constraints in sensor networks,
which will disappear with the development of fabrication techniques. However, the energy
constraint is unlikely to be solved soon due to slow progress in developing battery capacity.
Moreover, the untended nature of sensor nodes and hazardous sensing environments preclude
battery replacement as a feasible solution. On the other hand, the surveillance nature of many
sensor network applications requires a long lifetime; therefore, it is a very important research
issue to provide a form of energy-efficient surveillance service for a geographic area. Much
of the current research focuses on how to provide full or partial sensing coverage in the
context of energy conservation.
C. Network Scale and Time-Varying Characteristics of WSN
Under severe energy constraints, Sensor nodes operate with limited computing,
storage and communication capabilities. Depending upon the application, the densities of the
WSNs may vary widely, ranging from very sparse to very dense. In these sensor nodes the
behaviour of sensor nodes is dynamic and highly adaptive, as the need to self organize and
conserve energy forces sensor nodes to adjust the behaviour constantly in response to their
current level of activity. Furthermore, the sensor nodes may be requires adjusting the
behaviour in response to the erratic and unpredictable behaviour of wireless connections
caused by high noise levels and radio-frequency interference, to prevent severe performance
degradation of the application supported.
D. Management at a Distance:
Sensor nodes will be deployed at our door field such as a subway station. It is difficult
for managers or operators to manage the network directly. Thus the framework should
provide an indirect remote control/ management system.
ROUTING PROTOCOLS
INTRODUCTION:
The routing protocol is a process to select suitable path for the data to travel from
source to destination. The process encounters several difficulties while selecting the route,
which depends upon, type of network, channel characteristics and the performance metrics.
The data sensed by the sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network (WSN) is typically
forwarded to the base station that connects the sensor network with the other networks (may
be internet) where the data is collected, analyzed and some action is taken accordingly.
In very small sensor networks where the base station and motes (sensor nodes) so
close that they can communicate directly with each other than this is single-hop
communication but in most WSN application the coverage area is so large that requires
thousands of nodes to be placed and this scenario requires multi-hop communication because
most of the sensor nodes are so far from the sink node (gateway) so that they cannot
communicate directly with the base station. The single-hop communication is also called
direct communication and multihop communication is called indirect communication.
In multi-hop communication the sensor nodes not only produce and deliver their
material but also serve as a path for other sensor nodes towards the base station. The process
of finding suitable path from source node to destination node is called routing and this is the
primary responsibility of the network layer.

ROUTING CHALLENGES IN WSNs

The design task of routing protocols for WSN is quite challenging because of multiple
characteristics, which differentiate them, from wireless infrastructure-less networks. Several
types of routing challenges involved in wireless sensor networks. Some of important
challenges are mentioned below:
• It is almost difficult to allocate a universal identifiers scheme for a big quantity of sensor
nodes. So, wireless sensor motes are not proficient of using classical IP-based protocols.
• The flow of detected data is compulsory from a number of sources to a specific base
station. But this is not occurred in typical communication networks.
• The created data traffic has significant redundancy in most of cases. Because many sensing
nodes can generate same data while sensing. So, it is essential to exploit such redundancy by
the routing protocols and utilize the available bandwidth and energy as efficiently as possible.
• More over wireless motes are firmly restricted in relations of transmission energy,
bandwidth, capacity and storage and on-board energy. Due to such dissimilarities, a number
of new routing protocols have been projected in order to cope up with these routing
challenges in wireless sensor networks.
Design Challenges in WSN
 Energy efficiency
 Complexity
 Scalability
 Delay
 Robustness
 Data transmission and transmission model
 Sensor location

Classification of routing protocols.

The routing protocols define how nodes will communicate with each other and how the
information will be disseminated through the network. There are many ways to classify the
routing protocols of WSN. The basic classification of routing protocols is illustrated in Figure
1.

Node centric:
In node centric protocols the destination node is specified with some numeric identifiers
and this is not expected type of communication in Wireless sensor networks. E.g. Low
energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH).

Low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH) :

LEACH is a routing protocol that organizes the cluster such that the energy is equally
divided in all the sensor nodes in the network. In LEACH protocol several clusters are
produced of sensor nodes and one node defined as cluster head and act as routing node for
all the other nodes in the cluster. As in routing protocols the cluster head is selected
before the whole communication starts and the communication fails if there is any
problem occurs in the cluster head and there is much chances that the battery dies earlier
as compare to the other nodes in cluster as the fix cluster head is working his duties of
routing for the whole cluster. LEACH protocol apply randomization and cluster head is
selected from the group of nodes so this selection of cluster head from several nodes on
temporary basis make this protocol more long lasting as battery of a single node is not
burdened for long. Sensor nodes elect themselves as cluster head with some probability
criteria defined by the protocol and announce this to other nodes .

Data-centric:

In most of the wireless sensor networks, the sensed data or information is far more
valuable than the actual node itself. Therefore data centric routing techniques the prime
focus is on the transmission of information specified by certain attributes rather than
collecting data from certain nodes.
In data centric routing the sink node queries to specific regions to collect data of some
specific characteristics so naming scheme based on attributes is necessary to describe the
characteristics of data. Examples are as follows:

Sensor protocols for information via negotiation (SPIN) :

SPIN is abbreviation of sensor protocol for information via negotiation. This protocol is
defined to use to remove the deficiency like flooding and gossiping that occurs in other
protocols. The main idea is that the sharing of data, which is sensed by the node, might
take more resources as compare to the meta-data, which is just a descriptor about the data
sensed, by the node. The resource manager in each node monitors its resources and adapts
their functionality accordingly.
Three messages namely ADV, REQ and DATA are used in SPIN. The node broadcast an
ADV packet to all the other nodes that it has some data. This advertising node ADV
message includes attributes of the data it has. The nodes having interests in data, which
the advertising node has requested by sending REQ message, to the advertising node. On
receiving the REQ message the advertising node send data to that node. This process
continues when the node on reception of data generate an ADV message and send it. The
whole model SPIN is shown in (Figure 2).

Directed diffusion (DD) :

Directed diffusion is a data centric routing technique. It uses this data centric technique
for information gathering and circulating. This routing protocol is also energy efficient
and energy saving protocol so that’s why life time of the network is increased. All the
 communication in directed diffusion routing protocol is node to node so there is no need
of addressing in this protocol.

Source-initiated (Src-initiated) :
In these types of protocols the source node advertises when it has data to share and then
the route is generated from the source side to the destination. Examples is SPIN.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Protocols Advantages Disadvantages

If the thresholds HT and ST
are not received, the nodes will
never communicate, and no
data will be transmitted to the
Energy consumption in this protocol is
user and the base station does
TEEN lower than in proactive protocols or those
not know which nodes have
that transmit data periodically.
exhausted their energy.
TEEN is not suitable for
applications that require
periodic mailings data.
Requires additional complexity
to implement functions of
Provides flexibility that allows the user to
thresholds and time periods
select the CT time interval, and threshold
CT.
APTEEN values HT and ST so that the power
The additional cost and
consumption is controlled by the variation
complexity associated with the
of these parameters.
formation of clusters at several
levels are quite high.
The Total evaluation presents
some difficulty, because of the
absence of any central control.
Does not specify a particular
Ensures that all sensors are part of a single protocol to be used for
cluster, and the cluster heads are well communication between
distributed. cluster-heads and the base
HEED
Extends the life of the nodes within the station.
network. Clustering topology does not
Creates widespread clusters. achieve minimum energy
consumption in the intra-
cluster communication.
The clusters generated are not
balanced in size.
It Provides scalability in network by This Significantly based on
limiting most communications within the CHs rather than members of
different clusters. the cluster nodes to
LEACH
The Cluster-heads aggregate or merge the communicate with the base
information gathered by sensor nodes, station. Thus, he incurs
which helps to limit the traffic generated in robustness problems such as
 the network. failure of CHs.
The Role of the distributive property of The CHs farthest from the base
CH between cluster members. station quickly die with respect
to those are close to the station.
We Can not be CH during a
round if the random numbers
generated by all network nodes
are higher than the probability
T (n).
Random Location bridges does
not ensure an efficient energy
Balanced energy dissipation. balance.
Lifetime of network is extended. The sensor node sends its data
More stable region that LEACH. at the same CH if it is closer to
IB-LEACH
The use of the bridge and CH reduce the the base station or gateway.
phenomenon of the rapid death of CH The choice of the bridge is
caused by excessive energy consumption. based solely on energy without
counting the distance which
affects energy consumption.

Medium Access Control

Medium access control (MAC) protocols enforce a methodology to allow multiple

devices access to a shared media network. Before LANs, communication between computing
devices had been point-to-point. That is, two devices were connected by a dedicated channel.
LANs are shared media networks, in which all devices attached to the network receive each
transmission and must recognize which frames they should accept. Media sharing reduced the
cost of the network, but also meant that MAG protocols were needed to coordinate use of the
medium. There are two approaches to Media Access Control in LANs: contention and token-
passing.

The classification of MAC protocols

 Contention based protocols without reservation.

 Contention based protocols with reservation.
 Contention based protocols with scheduling.
 Other protocols.

MAC layer protocols:

 MAC Protocols for Ad-hoc
MACAW,
Contention based (i) Sender Initiated (1) Single Channel FAMA
BTMA,
ICSMA,
(2) Multiple Channel DBTMA.
RI-BTMA,
MARCH,
(ii) Receiver Initiated MACA-BI
D-PRMA,
FPRP,
CATA,
SRMA or PA,
Contention based with reservation (i)Synchronous HRMA
(ii)Asynchronous MACA or PR,
1. Contention based protocols without reservation:
 No assurances.
 Bandwidth isn’t reserved.
2. Contention based protocols with reservation:
 Assurances can be given.
 Bandwidth is reserved.
3. Contention based protocols with scheduling:
 Assurances can be given.
 Conveyed planning is done between nodes.
4. Other protocols:
 It can, likewise utilise a new methodology.
 Consolidate numerous highlights of different protocols.
1. Contention based protocols without reservation:
(i) Sender Initiated:
The packets transmission is started by the sender node.

1. Single Channel sender started. For instance, FAMA, MACAW.

2. Multiple Channel started protocols. For instance, ICSMA, DBTMA, BTMA.
(ii) Receiver Initiated:
The connection is started by the beneficiary node—for instance, MARCH, MACA-BI, RI-
BTMA.

2. Contention based protocols with reservation:

(i) Synchronous protocols:
In synchronous protocols, all node is kept synchronized—for instance, FPRP, SRMA or PA,
HRMA, CATA, D-PRMA.
(ii) Asynchronous protocols:
Relative time data is utilised to accomplish affecting restrictions—for instance, RTMAC,
MACA or PR.

3. Contention based protocols with scheduling:

Every one of the nodes is dealt with similarly, and no node is getting denied of data
transmission. For instance, DLPS, DWOP, DPS.

4. Other protocols:
These Media Access Control or MAC protocol don’t carefully fall into any above
classification. For instance, RBAR, PCM, MCSMA, MMAC.

Sensor Medium Control (S-MAC):

S-MAC is a medium-access control (MAC) protocol designed for wireless sensor

networks. Wireless sensor networks use battery-operated computing and sensing devices. A
network of these devices will collaborate for a common application such as environmental
monitoring. We expect sensor networks to be deployed in an ad hoc fashion, with individual
nodes remaining largely inactive for long periods of time, but then becoming suddenly active
when something is detected. These characteristics of sensor networks and applications
motivate a MAC that is different from traditional wireless MACs such as IEEE 802.11 in
almost every way: energy conservation and self-configuration are primary goals, while per-
node fairness and latency are less important.

 S-mac has three phases. There are 1.wakeup,2. Sleep,3.listen

Advantages: The battery utilisation is increased implementing sleep schedules. This protocol
is simple to implement, long messages can be efficiently transferred using message passing
technique.

Disadvantages: RTS/CTS are not used due to which broadcasting which may result in
collision. Adaptive listening causes overhearing or idle listening resulting in inefficient
battery usage. Since sleep and listen periods are fixed variable traffic load makes the
algorithm efficient.
B-MAC

B-MAC (Berkeley MAC) is a carrier sense media access protocol for wireless sensor
networks that provides a flexible interface to obtain ultra low power operation, effective
collision avoidance, and high channel utilization. To achieve low power operation, B-MAC
employs an adaptive preamble sampling scheme to reduce duty cycle and minimize idle
listening. B-MAC is designed for low traffic, low power communication, and is one of the
most widely used protocols (e.g. it is part of TinyOS).

IEEE 802.15.4 Standard:

IEEE standard 802.15.4 intends to offer the fundamental lower network layers of a
type of wireless personal area network (WPAN) which focuses on low-cost, low-speed
ubiquitous communication between devices. It can be contrasted with other approaches, such
as WI-FI, which offer more bandwidth and requires more power. The emphasis is on very
low cost communication of nearby devices with little to no underlying infrastructure,
intending to exploit this to lower power consumption even more.
The basic framework conceives a 10-meter communications range with a transfer rate
of 250 kbit/s. Tradeoffs are possible to favor more radically embedded devices with even
lower power requirements, through the definition of not one, but several physical layers.
Lower transfer rates of 20 and 40 kbit/s were initially defined, with the 100 kbit/s rate being
added in the current revision.
Even lower rates can be used, which results in lower power consumption. As already
mentioned, the main goal of IEEE 802.15.4 regarding WPANs is the emphasis on achieving
low manufacturing and operating costs through the use of relatively simple transceivers,
while enabling application flexibility and adaptability.
Key 802.15.4 features include:

1. real-time suitability by reservation of Guaranteed Time Slots (GTS).

2. collision avoidance through CSMA/CA.
3. integrated support for secure communications.
4. power management functions such as link speed/quality and energy detection.
5. Support for time and data rate sensitive applications because of its ability to operate either
as CSMA/CA or TDMA access modes. The TDMA mode of operation is supported via
the GTS feature of the standard.
6. IEEE 802.15.4-conformant devices may use one of three possible frequency bands for
operation (868/915/2450 MHz).
Zigbee Technology:

Zigbee is a standards-based wireless technology developed to enable low-cost, low-

power wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) and internet of things (IoT) networks.

Zigbee is for low-data rate, low-power applications and is an open standard. This,
theoretically, enables the mixing of implementations from different manufacturers, but in
practice, Zigbee products have been extended and customized by vendors and, thus, plagued
by interoperability issues. In contrast to Wi-Fi networks used to connect endpoints to high-
speed networks, Zigbee supports much lower data rates and uses a mesh networking protocol
to avoid hub devices and create a self-healing architecture.

Types of Zigbee Devies:

There are three classes of Zigbee devices:

Zigbee coordinator (ZC): The most capable device, the coordinator forms the root of the
network tree and may bridge to other networks. There is precisely one Zigbee coordinator in
each network since it is the device that started the network originally (the Zigbee Light Link
specification also allows operation without a Zigbee coordinator, making it more usable for
off-the-shelf home products). It stores information about the network, including acting as the
trust cente and repository for security keys.
Zigbee router (ZR): As well as running an application function, a router can act as an
intermediate router, passing data on from other devices.
Zigbee end device (ZED): Contains just enough functionality to talk to the parent node
(either the coordinator or a router); it cannot relay data from other devices. This relationship
allows the node to be asleep a significant amount of the time thereby giving long battery life.
A ZED requires the least amount of memory and thus can be less expensive to manufacture
than a ZR or ZC.
General Characteristic Of Zigbee Standard:

 Low battery consumption. A ZigBee end device should operate for months or even
years without needing its battery replaced.

 Low cost.

 Low data rate. The maximum data rate for a ZigBee device is 250Kbps.

 Easy to implement.

 Supports up to 65,000 nodes connected in a network.

 ZigBee can automatically establish its network.

 ZigBee uses small packets compared with WiFi and Bluetooth.

Zigbee Network Topologies:

Zigbee network topology can be divided into three types.

 Star topology

 Tree topology

 Peer-to-peer or mesh topology

Star topology:

The first topology is the star topology. Star topology consist of a coordinator and few
end devices. It is the simplest and most limited one in the Zigbee. Devices are all connect to
single coordinator node and all communication goes via this coordinator. The interesting part
about the star topology is it actually define by the underlying 802.15.4 specification which
Zigbee builds on. The disadvantage of this topology is it may become hindrance and there is
no option path from the source to the end devices.
Tree topology:

The second topology is tree topology. It consists of coordinator, few routers and end
devices that act as a central node or root tree. The routers operate as a extension for the
network coverage. The end nodes that connected to the parent (coordinators or routers) are
called children. Only the end devices can communicate with the parent. The detriment of the
tree topology is if one parent is disable, the children of the disable parent cannot
communicate with other devices in the network even they are close to each other.

Mesh Topology:

The third and last topology is peer-to-peer or mesh topology. This topology consists of a
coordinator, a few routers and an end devices. You can expand the network range by adding
more devices into the network. If during the transmission one of the path is fail, the node will
find the alternate path to reach to the destination therefore eliminating dead zones. Using this
mesh topology it is easier for user to add or remove the device because they can communicate
with any destination device in the network.

Feel free to contact E-SPIN for your Zigbee troubleshooting, as E-SPIN carry range
of product in specific for wireless network performance application analysis, that include
cover the Zigbee use case and context for whether your new Zigbee support device testing.
Architecture of Zigbee:

Zigbee architecture is a combination of 6 layers.

Application Layer
Application Interface Layer
Security Layer
Network Layer
Medium Access Control Layer
Physical Layer

1. The Application layer is present at the user level.

2. The Application Interface Layer, Security Layer, and Network Layer are the Zigbee
Alliance and they are used to store data and they use the stack.

3. Medium Access control and the Physical layer are IEEE 802.15.4 and they are
hardware which are silicon means they accept only 0 and 1.

Channel Access:

1.Contention Based Method (Carrier-Sense Multiple Access with Collision

Avoidance Mechanism)

2.Contention Free Method (coordinator dedicates specific time slot to each device
(Guaranteed Time Slot (GTS)))

Zigbee Applications:

1.Home Automantion

2.Medical Data Collection

3.Industrial Control System

Dissemination protocol for large sensor network
Dissemination protocols in a large sensor network typically take a data-centric paradigm
in which the communication primitives are organized around the sensing data instead of the
network nodes. In a large-scale sensor networks data flows from potentially multiple sources
to potentially multiple, static or mobile sinks. We define a data source as a sensor node that
detects a stimulus, which is a target or an event of interest, and generates data to report the
event.

1. Drip
Drip is the simplest of all dissemination protocols and is based on Trickle algorithm
and Drip provides a standard message reception interface in WSN. Each node that
wishes to use Drip will register with a specific identifier, which represents a
dissemination channel. All messages received on that channel will be delivered
directly to the node. Drip achieves great efficiency by avoiding redundant
transmissions if the same information has already been received by the nodes in the
neighbourhood.

2. CodeDrip
It is a data dissemination protocol proposed by Nildo et al. and can be used in
Wireless Sensor Networks. This protocol is mainly used for dissemination of small
values. Network Coding is a mechanism that combines packets in the network thus
increasing the throughput and decreasing number of messages transmitted. CodeDrip
uses the Trickle algorithm for dissemination. It is similar to Drip except for the fact
that here messages are sometimes combined and sent.

3. Dip
DIP (Dissemination Protocol) is a data detection and dissemination protocol proposed
by Lin et al. [4]. It is a protocol based on the Trickle algorithm. It works in two parts:
detecting whether a difference in data in nodes has occurred, and identifying which
data item is different. It uses the concept of version number and keys for each data
item.

4. DHV (Difference detection, Horizontal search and Vertical search)

It is a code consistency maintenance protocol given by Dang et al. It tries to keep
codes on different nodes in a WSN consistent and up to date It is based on the
observation that if two versions are different, they may only differ in a few least
significant bits of their version number rather than in all their bits. Hence, it is not
always necessary to transmit and compare the whole version number in the network.

5. Deluge
Deluge which is a reliable data dissemination protocol for propagating large data
objects from one source node to other nodes over a multi-hop, wireless sensor
network. Deluge achieves reliability in unpredictable wireless environments and
 robustness when node densities can vary by factors of a thousand or more. This
protocol is based on Trickle algorithm.

6. MNP
MNP is a Multihop Network re-programming Protocol (MNP). It provides a reliable
service to propagate new program code to all sensor nodes in the network. The main
aim of this dissemination protocol is to ensure reliable, low memory usage and fast
data dissemination. It is based on a sender selection protocol in which source nodes
compete with each other based on the number of distinct requests they have received.

Data Dissemination
Data dissemination is the process by which queries or data are routed in the sensor
network. The data collected by sensor nodes has to be communicated to the BS or to any
other node interested in the data. The node that generates data is called a source and the
information to be reported is called an event. A node which is interested in an event and seeks
information about it is called a sink. Traffic models have been developed for sensor networks
such as the data collection and data dissemination (diffusion) models. In the data collection
model, the source sends the data it collects to a collection entity such as the BS.

Flooding: In flooding, each node which receives a packet broadcasts it if the maximum hop-
count of the packet is not reached and the node itself is not the destination of the packet.

Gossiping: Gossiping is a modified version of flooding, where the nodes do not broadcast a
packet, but send it to a randomly selected neighbour. This avoids the problem of implosion,
but it takes a long time for a message to propagate throughout the network.

Rumor Routing: Rumor routing is an agent-based path creation algorithm. Agents, or "ants,"
are long-lived entities created at random by nodes. These are basically packets which are
circulated in the network to establish shortest paths to events that they encounter. They can
also perform path optimizations at nodes that they visit. When an agent finds a node whose
path to an event is longer than its own, it updates the node's routing table.

Sequential Assignment Routing: The sequential assignment routing (SAR) algorithm creates
multiple trees, where the root of each tree is a one-hop neighbour of the sink. Each tree grows
outward from the sink and avoids nodes with low throughput or high delay. At the end of the
procedure, most nodes belong to multiple trees.
Directed Diffusion: They generate requests/queries for data sensed by other nodes, instead of
all queries arising only from a BS. Hence, the sink for the query could be a BS or a sensor
node. The directed diffusion routing protocol improves on data diffusion using interest
gradients. The diffusion model allows nodes to cache or locally transform data. This
increases the scalability of communication and reduces the number of message transmissions
required.

Sensor Protocols for Information via Negotiation: A family of protocols called sensor
protocols for information via negotiation (SPIN) is proposed in. SPIN uses negotiation and
resource adaptation to address the deficiencies of flooding. Negotiation reduces overlap and
implosion, and a threshold-based resource-aware operation is used to prolong network
lifetime.

Cost-Field Approach: The cost-field approach considers the problem of setting up paths to a
sink. It is a two-phase process, the first phase being to set up the cost field, based on metrics
such as delay, at all sensor nodes, and the second being data dissemination using the costs.

Geographic Hash Table: Geographic hash table (GHT) is a system based on data-centric
storage, inspired by Internet- cale distributed hash table (DHT) systems such as Chord and
Tapestry. The routing protocol used is greedy perimeter stateless routing (GPSR), which
again uses geographical information to route the data and queries. GHT is more effective in
large sensor networks, where a large number of events are detected but not all are queried.

Small Minimum Energy Communication Network: Small minimum energy communication

network (SMECN) is a protocol proposed in to construct a sub-network from a given
communication network. If the entire sensor network is represented by a graph G, the
subgraph G' is constructed such that the energy usage of the network is minimized. The
power required to transmit data between two nodes u and v is modelled as

where t is a constant, n is the path loss exponent indicating the loss of power with distance
from the transmitter, and d(u, v) is the distance between u and v. Let the power needed to
receive the data be c. Since the transmission power increases exponentially with distance, it
would be more economical to transmit data by smaller hops. Suppose the path between u
(i.e., u0) and v (i.e., uk) is represented by r1= (u0, u1, ...uk), such that each (ui, ui+ 1 ) is an
edge in the subgraph G', then the total power consumed for the transmission is
Data Gathering

The objective of the data-gathering problem is to transmit the sensed data from each
sensor node to a BS. One round is defined as the BS collecting data from all the sensor nodes
once. This scheme performs poorly with respect to the energy × delay metric. Power-
Efficient Gathering for Sensor Information Systems: Power-efficient gathering for sensor
information systems (PEGASIS) is a data-gathering protocol based on the assumption that all
sensor nodes know the location of every other node, that is, the topology information is
available to all nodes. The goals of PEGASIS are as follows: • Minimize the distance over
which each node transmits • Minimize the broadcasting overhead • Minimize the number of
messages that need to be sent to the BS • Distribute the energy consumption equally across
all nodes.

Binary Scheme: This is also a chain-based scheme like PEGASIS, which classifies nodes
into different levels. All nodes which receive messages at one level rise to the next. The
number of nodes is halved from one level to the next. The number of nodes is halved from
one level to the next. For instance, consider a network with eight nodes labelled s0 to s7. This
scheme is possible when nodes communicate using CDMA, so that transmissions of each
level can take place simultaneously.
Chain-Based Three-Level Scheme: For non-CDMA sensor nodes, a binary scheme is not
applicable. The chain based three-level scheme addresses this situation, where again a chain
is constructed as in PEGASIS. The chain is divided into a number of groups to space out
simultaneous transmissions in order to minimize interference. One node out of each group
aggregates data from all group members and rises to the next level. The index of this leader
node is decided a priori. In the second level, all nodes are divided into two groups, and the
third level consists of a message exchange between one node from each group of the second
level.

Quality of a Sensor Network

The purpose of a sensor network is to monitor and report events or phenomena taking place
in a particular area. Hence, the main parameters which define how well the network observes
a given area are "coverage" and "exposure."

Coverage: Coverage is a measure of how well the network can observe or cover an event.
Coverage depends upon the range and sensitivity of the sensing nodes, and the location and
density of the sensing nodes in the given region. The worst-case coverage defines areas of
breach, that is, where coverage is the poorest. This can be used to determine if additional
sensors need to be deployed to improve the network. The best-case coverage, on the other
hand, defines the areas of best coverage. A path along the areas of best coverage is called a
maximum support path or maximum exposure path. A mathematical technique to solve the
coverage problem is the Voronoi diagram. It can be proved that the path PB will be
composed of line segments that belong to the Voronoi diagram corresponding to the sensor
graph.

In two dimensions, the Voronoi diagram of a set of sites is a partitioning of the plane into a
set of convex polygons such that all points inside a polygon are closest to the site enclosed by
the polygon, and the polygons have edges equidistant from the nearby sites

The algorithm to find the breach path PB is:

• Generate the Voronoi diagram, with the set of vertices V and the set of edges E. This is
done by drawing the perpendicular bisectors of every line segment joining two sites, and
using their points of intersection as the vertices of the convex polygons.

• Create a weighted graph with vertices from V and edges from E, such that the weight of
each edge in the graph is the minimum distance from all sensors in S. The edge weights
represent the distance from the nearest sensor. Smaller edge weights imply better coverage
along the edge.

• Determine the maximum cost path from I to F, using breadth-first search. The maximum
cost implies least coverage. Hence, the required breach path is along this maximum-cost path
determined from the Voronoi diagram. The breach path shows the region of maximum
vulnerability in a sensor network, where the coverage provided by the sensors is the weakest.

A related problem is that of finding the best-case coverage. The problem is

formally stated as finding the path which offers the maximum coverage, that is, the maximum
support path PS in S, from I to F. The solution is obtained by a mathematical technique called
Delaunay triangulation. This is obtained from the Voronoi diagram by connecting the sites
whose polygons share a common edge. The best path PS will be a set of line segments from
the Delaunay triangulation, connecting some of the sensor nodes. The algorithm is again
similar to that used to find the maximum breach path, replacing the Voronoi diagram by the
Delaunay triangulation, and defining the edge costs proportional to the line segment lengths.
The maximum support path is hence formed by a set of line segments connecting some of the
sensor nodes.

Exposure: Exposure is defined as the expected ability of observing a target in the sensor
field. It is formally defined as the integral of the sensing function on a path from source node
Ps to destination node Pd . The sensing power of a node s at point p is usually modelled as

where λ and k are constants, and d(s, p) is the distance of p from s. Consider a network with
sensors s1 ,s2 , ..., sn. The total intensity at point p, called the all sensor field intensity, is
given by

The closest- sensor field intensity at p is where Smin is the closest sensor to p.
 EC801PE: WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS
LTPC 3003

Prerequisite: Analogue and Digital Communications

Course Objectives:
1. To acquire the knowledge about various architectures and applications of Sensor Networks
2. To understand issues, challenges and emerging technologies for wireless sensor networks
3.To learn about various routing protocols and MAC Protocols
4. To understand various data gathering and data dissemination methods
5.To Study about design principals, node architectures, hardware and software required for
implementation of wireless sensor networks.
Course Outcomes: Upon completion of the course, the student will be able to:
1. Analyze and compare various architectures of Wireless Sensor Networks
2. Understand Design issues and challenges in wireless sensor networks
3. Analyze and compare various data gathering and data dissemination methods.
4. Design, Simulate and Compare the performance of various routing and MAC protocol
UNIT - I:
Introduction to Sensor Networks, unique constraints and challenges, Advantage of Sensor
Networks,Applications of Sensor Networks, Types of wireless sensor networks
UNIT - II:
Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) and Wireless Sensor Networks, Enabling technologies for
Wireless Sensor Networks. Issues and challenges in wireless sensor networks
UNIT - III:
Routing protocols, MAC protocols: Classification of MAC Protocols, S-MAC Protocol, B-MAC
protocol,IEEE 802.15.4 standard and Zig Bee
UNIT - IV:
Dissemination protocol for large sensor network. Data dissemination, data gathering, and data
fusion;Quality of a sensor network; Real-time traffic support and security protocols.
UNIT - V:
Design Principles for WSNs, Gateway Concepts Need for gateway, WSN to Internet
Communication,and Internet to WSN Communication.
Single-node architecture, Hardware components & design constraints,Operating systems and
execution environments, introduction to Tiny OS and nesC.
TEXT BOOKS:
1. Ad-Hoc Wireless Sensor Networks- C. Siva Ram Murthy,B. S. Manoj, Pearson
2. Principles of Wireless Networks – Kaveh Pah Laven and P. Krishna Murthy, 2002, PE
REFERENCE BOOKS:
1. Wireless Digital Communications – Kamilo Feher, 1999, PHI.
2. Wireless Communications-Andrea Goldsmith, 2005 Cambridge University Press.
3. Mobile Cellular Communication – Gottapu Sasibhushana Rao, Pearson Education, 2012.
4. Wireless Communication and Networking – William Stallings, 2003, PHI.
https://www.tescaglobal.com/blog/what-is-wireless-sensor-network-and-types-of-wsn/
https://www.elprocus.com/introduction-to-wireless-sensor-networks-types-and-applications/

1.What is meant by WSN?

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) can be defined as a self-configured and infrastructure-less
wireless networks to monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound,
vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants and to cooperatively pass their data through the network to
a main location or sink where

2.What is gateway in wireless sensor network?

A gateway is a network node used in telecommunications that connects two networks with
different transmission protocols together.
Gateways serve as an entry and exit point for a network as all data must pass through or
communicate with the gateway prior to being routed.

3.What is base station in WSN?

Base stations are one or more components of the wireless sensor networks with more energy,
computational, and communication resources. Base station acts as a gateway between sensor
nodes and end user where they forward information from the WSN to a server.

4.What is sink or base station?

A sink/base station is the type of sensor node which possesses high power, large memory and it
is the entity, where information is required. Sink/base Station can be a part of the wireless sensor
network field like sensor/actuator or it could be the node outside the field of sensors.

6.How do sensor nodes communicate in WSN?

The sensor nodes can communicate among themselves using radio signals. A wireless sensor node
is equipped with sensing and computing devices, radio transceivers and power components.

7.What is the frequency of radio waves?

Radio Waves

They have frequencies from 300 GHz to as low as 3 kHz, and corresponding wavelengths from 1
millimeter to 100 kilometers. Like all other electromagnetic waves, radio waves travel at the speed
of light

8.How does radio frequency work?

Frequency is measured in hertz (or cycles per second) and wavelength is measured in meters (or
centimeters). Radio waves are electromagnetic waves and they travel at the speed of light in free
space. The equation that join frequency and length is the following:
speed of light (c) = frequency x wavelength.

How sensing range does differs from communication range?

By Sensing range here is for ability of the sensor node to sense its surrounding (like temperature
sensor sensing temperature of its surrounding) and communication range is a range which is
used to communicate the data to its neighboring nodes so that data can be reached to the sink
node.

What is the range of a wireless sensor node?

One of the limitations of current wireless sensors is the communication range, with most devices
having 100 meters as maximum range.

How far can radio signals travel?

So realistically, for two people carrying a handheld two-way radio, the maximum communication
distance on flat ground with no obstructions is around 4 to 6 miles. So you may be wondering why
you see radios that have range claims of 25 miles or higher. Technically they could communicate
that far.

What are nodes in WSN?

Sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network (WSN) measure environmental parameters and
transmit the data back to a network gateway where it is aggregated, stored, and processed.
What is the purpose for implementing WSN?

A WSN aims to gather environmental data and the node devices placement may be known or
unknown a priori. Network nodes can have actual or logical communication with all devices; such a
communication defines a topology according to the application.

What are the main challenges in wireless sensor networks WSN ?

Security, privacy, computation and energy constraints, and reliability issues are the major
challenges facing WSNs, especially during routing. To solve these challenges, WSN routing
protocols must ensure confidentiality, integrity, privacy preservation, and reliability in the network

High bandwidth demand, high energy consumption, quality of service (QoS) provisioning,
data processing and compressing techniques, and cross-layer design. physical environment.
Mobile nodes have the ability to sense, compute, and communicate like static nodes.

What are radio frequency signals?

A radio frequency (RF) signal refers to a wireless electromagnetic signal used as a form of
communication, if one is discussing wireless electronics. Radio waves are a form of
electromagnetic radiation with identified radio frequencies that range from 3kHz to 300 GHz.

What are the 2 types of architecture used in WSN?

There are 2 types of architecture used in WSN:

Layered Network Architecture
Layered Network Architecture makes use of a few hundred sensor nodes and a single powerful
base station. Network nodes are organized into concentric Layers. It consists of 5 layers and three
cross layers
Clustered Architecture.

In the hierarchical network architecture, WSN is divided into several clusters. In each cluster, one
special node acts as cluster head (CH) which collects and compresses the data sent by common
sensor nodes within that cluster, and then transmits the processed data to BS.

What are the different types of WSN?

Classification of Wireless Sensor Networks

 Static and Mobile WSN.
 Deterministic and Nondeterministic WSN.
A deterministic function always returns the same results if given the same input values. A
nondeterministic function may return different results every time it is called, even when the same
input values are provided.

Non-deterministic sensor placement is often referred to as random placement, while deterministic

placement is often called controlled placement in some texts.
In this paper, we would refer to random sensor placement as non-deterministic placement while
controlled placement would be referred to as deterministic placement.
In Deterministic Sensor Placement Schemes (DSPS),the nodes are placed in order to meet some
desired performance objectives. For example, the coverage of the monitored region can be ensured
through careful planning of node densities and fields of view and thus the network topology can be
established at setup time. DSPS are common in certain applications like room temperature
monitoring, medical applications, underwater acoustics,imaging and video sensors among others.

 Single Base Station and Multi Base Station WSN.

base station in WSN
Base stations are one or more components of the wireless sensor networks with more energy,
computational, and communication resources. Base station acts as a gateway between sensor
nodes and end user where they forward information from the WSN to a server.
 Static Base Station and Mobile Base Station WSN.



 Single-hop and Multi-hop WSN.

 Self – Reconfigurable and Non – Self – Configurable WSN.
In a nonself configurable network, the arrangement of sensor networks cannot be done by them
within a network & depends on a control unit for gathering data. In wireless sensor networks, the
sensor nodes maintain and organize the network and collaboratively work by using other sensor
nodes to accomplish the task

 Homogeneous and Heterogeneous WSN.

HOMOGENEOUS WSN
A wireless sensor network is said to be homogeneous if all of it sensors have the same storage,
processing, battery power, sensing, and communication capabilities

HETEROGENEOUS SENSORS
Modern sensor networks are heterogeneous networks—they are a combination of a variety of wired
and wireless sensors/actuators and can have combinations of routing or non-routing nodes, or they
may have a combination of aggregating and/or simple data forwarding nodes.

Which of the following are the applications of WSN?

WSN is deployed in numerous fields such as animal tracking, precision agriculture,
environmental monitoring, security and surveillance, smart buildings, health care and so on.

What are the issues and challenges in using WSN in healthcare industry?
Authors in [5] have mentioned attacks in health monitoring in detail manner viz. eavesdropping
and modification of medical data, forging of alarms on medical data, denial of service, location
and activity tracking of users, physical tampering with devices and jamming attacks.

What is the advantage of using WSN in healthcare?

The application of WSNs for patient monitoring offers some advantages over the wired systems
like the ease of use, reduced risk of infections, reduced risk of failures, enhanced mobility and
lower the cost of delivery [9] .

What is the disadvantage of a WSN in healthcare?

They feel that their privacy is revealed, and they have psychological pressure on their minds.
Another disadvantage of using wireless sensor networks is that the cost maintaining these sensor
nodes is a big expenditure for the patient because sensor nodes are expensive [20].

What is biggest challenge in underground WSN?

The major problems are extremely high path loss, small communication range, and high dynamics
of the electromagnetic (EM) waves when penetrating through soil, sand, and water and through the
very specific crude oil medium.

What are the challenges of the energy consumption of different sensors nodes?
In WSNs, each sensor node has different energy consumption rate due to inequality in event
sensing and distance from Base Station. This leads to energy disparity among sensor nodes in the
network which in turn shortens the lifetime of the network. Another important issue in WSN is
satisfying the QoS parameters.

Why energy is an important issue in WSN?

Energy conservation is a big issue in WSN as sensor hubs carry limited non-rechargeable power
source and it is not easy to replace the nodes which makes power saving important to increase
the lifetime of nodes.

What is energy consumption in WSN?

Energy consumption means the total energy consumed by the network to perform transmission,
reception and data aggregation. The comparisons performed among the different approaches
based on the energy consumption in both cluster head sensor nodes and cluster member sensor
nodes.

Which of the following is the energy source for WSN?

The most common power sources for wireless sensor nodes are batteries.

Internal unit of sensor node?

What is node in WSN?
Sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network (WSN) measure environmental parameters and
transmit the data back to a network gateway where it is aggregated, stored, and processed

What are the design challenges in next generation sensors?

Challenges in multi-media WSN include high bandwidth demand, high energy consumption,
quality of service (QoS) provisioning, data processing and compressing techniques, and cross-
layer design.

Characteristics of WSN
 Power consumption limitations for sensor nodes.
 Ability to cope with failures of nodes.
 Mobility of nodes.
 Heterogeneity of nodes.
 Homogeneity of nodes.
 Ability to deploy on a large scale.
 Capability to survive harsh environmental conditions.
 Helps to use easily.

Which operating system is used in WSN?

Contiki [18], is a lightweight open source OS written in C for WSN sensor nodes. Contiki is a
highly portable OS and it is build around an event-driven kernel. Contiki provides preemptive
multitasking that can be used at the individual process level.

How many types of topologies are in WSN?

... are different protocols for node distribution and communication (topolo- gy). The two main
WSN topologies are star topology and mesh topology. Star topology, a commonly used
assemblage of nodes, has two types of nodes: 1) one coordinator node and 2) many end nodes
(Figure 1(a)).

Which topology is best in WSN?

Point-to-Point Networks

Theoretically, these systems are the most reliable because there is only one single point of failure in
the topology—the host itself

What is controller in WSN?

The control block drives operations in the system, the wireless block ensures communication,
and data transfer, the actuator part is drived by control block. The software drives all operations in
the system. Sensors ensure basic information about environment.

Does WSN measure wind parameters?

WSNs can measure environmental conditions such as temperature, sound, pollution levels,
humidity and wind.

What are different kinds of nodes used in WSN?

Different types of WSNs include:
 Terrestrial WSNs.
 Underground WSNs.
 Underwater WSNs.
 Multimedia WSNs.
 Mobile WSNs.

What are the performance metrics of WSN?

Wireless Sensor Network The three performance metrics are: coverage, energy consumption and
worst case delay.

How are sensors powered?

The latest switching regulators allow sensors to be powered for much longer using batteries. Even
from a 4–20mA current loop, it is possible to produce three times as much power. Many IoT and
Industry 4.0 applications use a 3V coin cell as a low-cost, reliable power supply.05-Jul-2018

What are the types of sensors?

There are many different types of sensors, the main categories are;
Position Sensors.
A position sensor is a sensor that facilitates measurement of mechanical position. A position
sensor may indicate absolute position (location) or relative position (displacement), in terms of
linear travel, rotational angle, or three-dimensional space.
Pressure Sensors.
Pressure sensors are used for control and monitoring in thousands of everyday applications.
Pressure sensors can also be used to indirectly measure other variables such as fluid/gas flow, speed,
water level, and altitude
Temperature Sensors.
A temperature sensor is a device used to measure temperature. This can be air temperature, liquid
temperature or the temperature of solid matter
Force Sensors.
A force sensor is another term used for a load cell or weight sensor. They are used to measure
compression, force, strain and load.
Vibration Sensors.
A vibration sensor is a device that measures the amount and frequency of vibration in a given
system, machine, or piece of equipment. Those measurements can be used to detect imbalances or
other issues in the asset and predict future breakdowns
Piezo Sensors.
Piezo sensors are used within many sensors and devices. They are used to convert a physical
parameter; for example acceleration or pressure, into an electrical signal.
Fluid Property Sensors.
Fluid property sensor is a novel fluid property sensor that will directly and simultaneously
measure the viscosity, density, dielectric constant and temperature of fluids.
Humidity Sensors.
Humidity sensors are used to measure and monitor the amount of water present in the
surrounding air.
Which type of sensors used in mobile phones?
Various Smartphone Sensors
Motion Sensors – Motion sensors are useful for monitoring device movement, such as tilt, shake,
rotation, or swing.
Environmental Sensors
– .Environmental sensors are small, eco-friendly devices enabling farmers to monitor weather,
water, irradiation, and soil moisture levels to improve field management and prevent crop
and plant disease..
Position Sensors
A position sensor is any device used for measuring the distance traveled by a body starting
from its reference position. It measures linear or angular position in reference to a fixed point or
arbitrary reference. The sensor can also be used to detect the presence or absence of an object
Ambient Light Sensor
An ambient light sensor is a component in smartphones, notebooks, other mobile devices,
automotive displays and LCD TVs. It is a photodetector that is used to sense the amount of
ambient light present, and appropriately dim the device's screen to match it.
Proximity Sensor
The proximity sensor detects when a user is holding the phone near their face during a call and
turns off the display to prevent keypad presses and battery consumption from the display
Or
Android phones equipped with a proximity sensor disable the screen when you hold the phone
close to your face while you are on a call...
Accelerometer Sensor
Accelerometers in mobile phones are used to detect the orientation of the phone.
Gyroscope Sensor
Gyroscope sensor is responsible for the autorotation of the screen and view on the screen
whenever a phone is rotated. One of the biggest implementations of a Gyroscope is that it enables
smooth rotations and execution of multiple commands in games by 3D motions
Barometer Sensor
The barometer assists the GPS chip inside the device to get a faster lock by instantly delivering
altitude data. Additionally, the barometer can be utilized to provide 'floors climbed' information to
a phones 'health' app.
Touch sensors
A touch sensor is a type of device that captures and records physical touch or embrace on a
device and/or object. It enables a device or object to detect touch or near proximity, typically by a
human user or operator
What is throughput in WSN?
The end-to-end network throughput measures the number of packets per second received at the
destination. It is considered here as an external measure of the effectiveness of a protocol. (c)
Success Rate. The total number of packets received at the destinations verses the total number of
packets sent from the source.

Which is the crucial parameter when we consider WSN?

To design a WSN it is necessary to identify the major issues or the main metric parameters of WSN,
which are network lifetime, data gathering, and security. These parameters effect on the overall
performance of WSN.

What is packet delivery ratio?

In other words Packet delivery ratio is the ratio of number of packets received at the destination
to the number of packets sent from the source. The performance is better when packet delivery
ratio is high.
What is the difference between single hop and multihop wireless network?

Single Hop vs Multi Hop In Internet

When packet travels from source to destination using single networking device, it is known as
single hop system. When packet travels from source to destination using more than one
networking devices, it is known as multi hop system.

What is quality of service in WSN?

QoD refers to the quality of information provided such as the data accuracy, resolution, and
timeliness. Since WSNs are data centric, QoD is a broader concept than the traditional notion of
QoS, which mainly focuses on the low level network performance such as the delay, jitter, or
throughput.
What are four general techniques to improve quality of service?
Some techniques that can be used to improve the quality of service. The four common
methods: scheduling, traffic shaping, admission control, and resource reservation.

Types of WSN
WSN has many types of sensors depending on the situation such as
Terrestrial WSN
What is terrestrial wireless sensor network?
Terrestrial Wireless Sensor Networks: Terrestrial WSNs are used for communicating
base stations efficiently, and comprise thousands of wireless sensor nodes deployed either
in an unstructured (ad hoc) or structured (Pre-planned) manner.

 Terrestrial WSNs consist of numerous tiny sensor nodes. These nodes are randomly
deployed in a specific area from where an ad hoc network is used for communication
between the nodes. These nodes can be organized by optimal placement, grid
placement, or 2D and 3Dplacement models

 The drawbacks of terrestrial applications are the effect of weather such as rain and
snow on an optical wireless communication link. The author has proposed a method to
increase the lifetime performance of the network

Underground WSN

An underground WSN is a sensor node which is placed under the ground for collecting
information on underground conditions.
The drawback of WSN is its limited battery power because this is very difficult to
recharge or change. The wireless communication’s main limitation is the loss of signal at
high potential.
Therefore, in order to enhance the reliability of WSN, efficient routing algorithms have
been carried out for solving the limitation of the WSN’s accuracy during the routing
process.
An mathematical framework in order to analyze the dynamic connectivity in the wireless
underground sensor network (WUSN). Their aim was to monitor the changes in the
environmental parameters such as the soil composition and the random soil moisture.
Although a WUSN is mainly formed by underground sensor nodes, the network still requires
aboveground nodes for additional functionalities such as data retrieval
management, and relaying. Therefore, considering the locations of sender and receiver nodes, three
different communication links may exist in WUSNs,

Underground-to-underground (UG2UG) Link: Both the sender and the receiver are buried
underground and communicate through soil. This type of communication is employed for multi-
hop information delivery and is the main focus of this work.
Underground-to-aboveground (UG2AG) Link: The sender is buried and the receiver is above
the ground. Monitoring data is transferred to aboveground relays or sinks through these links.
Aboveground-to-underground (AG2UG) Link: Aboveground sender node sends messages to
underground nodes. This link is used for management information delivery to the underground
sensors
Parameter to Analyze

Underwater WSN
Underwater wireless communication networks (UWCNs) consist of sensors and autonomous
underwater vehicles (AUVs) that interact, coordinate and share information with each other
to carry out sensing and monitoring functions.
Or
The underwater wireless sensor network (UWSN) is a network used to perform monitoring of tasks
over a specific region; it is equipped with smart sensors and vehicles that are adapted to
communicate cooperatively through wireless connections [1]. The surface sink retrieves the data
from sensor nodes.
How does underwater wireless communication work?
An underwater transmitter directs a sonar signal to the water's surface, causing tiny
vibrations that correspond to the 1s and 0s transmitted. Above the surface, a highly
sensitive receiver reads these minute disturbances and decodes the sonar signal.
What are the sensors used in underwater?
Most underwater sensing technologies rely on acoustic signals (e.g., sonar), light signals,
electromagnetic signals, and bionic sensors.
Multimedia WSN

Wireless Multimedia Sensor Network (WMSN) [6] is a network of wirelessly interconnected

sensor nodes equipped with multimedia devices, such as cameras and microphones, and capable to
retrieve video and audio streams, still images, as well as scalar sensor data.

Standard Video and Audio Sensors:-standard video and audio sensor are arrange at the first tier
architecture of wireless sensor network. It is generally use to capture the still image, audio or
videos with low resolution
Scalar Sensors:-scalar sensor are use generally used to sense the scalar device and also capture the
physical attributes such as humidity, temperature, pressure etc. it is typically a resource- constraint
device which cover aspect in terms of storage capacity, energy supply or processing capability.
Multimedia Processing Hubs:-It is typically having a large computational which collect the
resources from different nodes and integrate it.it generally used to reduce the volume and
dimensionality of the data to transfer it to the sink or storage hub.
Storage Hubs:-storage hub allow data mining also it helps in streaming it in real-time or further
processing of data before send it to the end user
Sink.:-The sink help to integrate high level user queries and return the filter multimedia stream
back to the user, many sink are used
to connect large or heterogeneous network.
Gateway:-gatewayis the last portion of connectivity string in wireless sensor network, it is used to
collect data from multiple sink and is only Ip-Addressable component in wireless sensor network.it
also use to cover large geographical area and allocate suitable task to each sink.
User:-users are the highest end level of the wireless multimedia sensor network

And accordance to geographical area it issue the monitoring task to the wireless multimedia sensor
network.

Mobile WSN
Mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSNs) have emerged and shifted the focus from the typical
static wireless sensor networks to networks with mobile sensor nodes that are capable to sense the
various types of events. Also, they can change their position frequently in a specific sensing area.